Constraints on agency in micro-language policy and planning in schools : a case study of curriculum change

In studies of language policy and planning (LPP) in schools, agency has often been understood in terms of how the impact of teachers, students and parents influence the implementation of top - down macro - LPP or of the ways that community stakeholders generate LPP from below (Wiley & García, 2016). Such studies have emphasised the agency of various school community actors in shaping LPP in their local context (Alexander, 1992). This chapter will consider the question of agency from the perspective of the school as an ecological context in which actors claim agency in school - based LPP and explore the ways that the local ecology has an impact on, and constrains possibilities for, exercising agency. It will do this by examining the process of a school - initiated curriculum change to increase time for the study of foreign languages in a particular school as a case study of teachers ’ agency in changing a schools ’ LPP. It will investigate the ecology of forces that influenced the exercise of the language teachers’ agency as language planners within the school and the ways that this ecology of forces constrained their agentive possibilities. It will consider in particular the impacts of prevailing ideologies of education and the place of language study within education, conceptualisations of curriculum as a cultural artefact, structural features of school organisation, and professional relationships between teachers of different disciplines. As the language teachers worked to design and implement the new curriculum, these forces worked in different ways to constrain their possibilities for acting and ultimately led to the failure of the initiative

Native and non-native speaker identities in interaction : trajectories of power

In intercultural interactions in which native speakers communicate with non-native speakers there is potential for asymmetries of power to shape how interaction occurs. These inequalities are not simply the result of a difference in command of the language between interlocutors but rather they relate to the social construction and performance of the identities of each participant. Using data drawn from intercultural interactions in a range of contexts, this article examines some of the ways in which the inequalities of power between native speakers and non-native speakers is an interactionally accomplished product by examining instances of intercultural interaction. Such inequalities are seen in instances of intervention in interactions that create and reaffirm the ideology of native speakers’ authority over language. The most obvious of such interventions are those in which the native speaker takes up an authoritative stance in relation to the linguistic productions of non-native speakers that emphasize the features and circumstances of their production rather than their communicative function. Such interventions may, however, occur in more covert ways. Where such interventions occur they may be ratified as legitimate activities by non-native speaker participants, and the power asymmetry is thereby co-constructed by the participant. However, such asymmetries may also be resisted by non-native speakers when they reassert their communicative intent and in so doing reframe the interaction away from inequalities

The interface between macro and micro-level language policy and the place of language pedagogies

This paper investigates the place of pedagogy in language-in-education policy through an analysis of how the macro-level of government policy interacts with the micro-level of local educational practice. It argues that pedagogy is typically considered a micro-level activity and policy frequently devolves decision-making about pedagogy to micro-level agents. For this reason, pedagogy is often invisible in policy texts. Pedagogy becomes a concern for macro-level policy when micro-level practice is constructed as being a problem and policy seeks to intervene to reform practice. However, whether pedagogy is explicitly discussed in policy, it remains nonetheless relevant for policy implementation and ultimately for the success of policy change. The silence about pedagogy in policy texts may render invisible the capacity for pedagogical change at the micro-level and the capabilities and resources needed to effect change. The paper will examine these issues through an investigation of a series of language policy contexts in which pedagogy is either an explicit concern or it remains implicit

Intercultural mediation, intercultural communication and translation

The role of translator as intercultural mediator has received greater attention in translation studies since the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1990s. This paper explores the question of intercultural mediation as an activity in intercultural communication and the ways this applies to translation. It takes as its starting point the idea that mediation is fundamentally an interpretive act, through which meanings that have been created in one language are communicated in another. The paper seeks to understand how the practices of intercultural mediation are realised in translation and argues that mediation is a process that involves aspects that are internal to the translator (mediation for the self) and aspects that are oriented to the reader of the target text (mediation for others), which are, in turn, linked through selective processes of determining what resources are needed to enable a target text reader to understand a source text meaning

Translation as intercultural mediation : setting the scene

This introduction to the volume examines the concept of intercultural mediation as it applies to the work of translators. To frame the discussion, it considers what it means for a translator to mediate between languages and cultures and the ways that mediation has been used in translation studies

Multilingualism research in Anglophone contexts as a discursive construction of multilingual practice

This article investigates the presence of multilingualism as an academic practice within the field of research in multilingualism by examining the citation practices of research publishing in key English-language journals in the field. It investigates how researchers make use of material published in other languages as a component of their research writing and thus of their conceptualisation of the field of research to determine to what extent multilingualism itself is actually present in multilingual research communicated in English. This article argues that, although some research published in languages other than English may be cited in multilingualism research, multilingualism as a visible research practice is largely absent from the study of multilingualism. This means that research into multilingualism largely constructs multilingualism as a subject to be studied from a perspective that lies outside the phenomenon of multilingualism itself and normalises monolingualism as the standard form of academic practice within the English-speaking world. It can therefore be argued that multilingualism research is a site in which a monolingual habitus predominates and that this represents an epistemological dilemma for the field

Pragmatics and intercultural mediation in intercultural language learning

This paper examines the role that pragmatics plays in language learners' practices of mediating between their own cultural understandings and those of the target culture. It will examine learners' experiences of cultural differences in language use and the ways in which learners develop insights into the culturally determined nature of language in use. It investigates the ways in which learners articulate their awareness of the meaningfulness of pragmatic differences in contexts in which language use shows cultural variation – speech acts, social deixis, politeness, etc. The paper examines ways in which language learners construct awareness of cultural variation in pragmatics both for themselves and for their interlocutors. In both mediation for self and mediation for others, there is a similar process of developing an interpretation of cultural behavior that takes into account both a culture internal perspective and a culture external perspective. The analysis details how language learners use pragmatics as a starting point for intercultural mediation and shows how analysis of language in use can provide an entry point into understandings of culture, and of the connection between language and culture. The behavior described is fundamentally an intercultural one. It is not simply the possession of knowledge about another culture as this is manifested in pragmatic differences but rather the ability to reflect on pragmatics differences as culturally meaningful to formulate positions between cultures as a mechanism to develop and express understandings of another culture. Learners demonstrate that intercultural mediation involves awareness of one's own cultural practices and expectations in relation to the aspect of language use being mediated as well as their knowledge of the target culture

Perspectivas críticas en el aprendizaje intercultural de lenguas

Intercultural language teaching and learning is one manifestation of the critical turn in language education. Its critical dimension is characterised by a strong emphasis on self-reflexivity in both teaching and learning, and by a transformational agenda for language education (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). Within language education, the critical project requires that the focus of language learning is to develop social actors capable of using language repertoires in ways that provide for agency both over language (in the choices they make about how to use their language resources) and through language (in the social possibilities they realise for themselves through their language repertoires). Within such a view of education, critical reflection comes to play an important role. To consider language education in such a way requires reconceptualising some of the fundamental starting assumptions of language education, which provides a basis for creating new emphases in both theory and practice. This article begins by examining the nature of this reconceptualisation and then examines the consequences of such reconceptualising for teaching and learning. It examines data from language learners to exemplify the forms of learning involved in this manifestation of the critical turn in language education.La enseñanza y el aprendizaje intercultural de lenguas es un ejemplo del cariz crítico que se ha adoptado en la enseñanza de lenguas. Su dimensión crítica se caracteriza por un fuerte énfasis en la reflexión personal tanto en la enseñanza como en el aprendizaje, así como por una aproximación transformadora (Liddicoat y Scarino, 2013). En el ámbito de la enseñanza de lenguas, el objetivo esencial consiste en que el enfoque del aprendizaje de lenguas se centre en desarrollar individuos capaces de usar repertorios lingüísticos de manera que sean sujetos activos tanto en el uso del lenguaje (en las elecciones que hacen sobre cómo usar sus recursos lingüísticos), como a través del lenguaje (en las posibilidades sociales que alcanzan por sí mismos a través de sus repertorios lingüísticos). Dentro de esa visión de la educación esta reflexión crítica juega un papel importante. Considerar la enseñanza de idiomas de esa manera requiere reconceptualizar algunos de los supuestos tradicionales de la educación de idiomas, lo que proporciona una base para crear nuevas áreas de actuación en la teoría y en la práctica. Este artículo comienza examinando la naturaleza de esta reconceptualización para seguidamente examinar las consecuencias de dicha reconceptualización para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje. Este estudio examina los datos recopilados con estudiantes de idiomas para ejemplificar las formas de aprendizaje patentes en esta enfoque crítico en la enseñanza de lenguas

The erosion of Norman French dialect features: evidence from linguistic atlases

This paper will investigate the replacement of one dialectal feature characteristic of bas normand (i.e. western Norman) – the evolutions of C+l – as attested in the Atlas linguistique de la France (ALF) (Edmont and Gilliéron, 1902-9; data collected in the 1890s) and the Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Normandie (ALEN) (Brasseur, 1981, 1984, 1997; data collected in the 1970s). These atlases show a gradual erosion of the Normand palatalised forms (Cj and Cʎ) by standard French forms (Cl). This process is not however a simple replacement of dialectal forms by non-dialectal forms but rather shows a “wave” of changes in which an earlier sound change ʎ > j is also involved. The process seems to involve a gradual reduction of the range of Cʎ in favour of Cj and of Cj in favour of Cl, with no cases of immediate replacement of Cʎ by Cl as a generalised pattern of sound change in particular local varieties. An analysis of the geographical distribution of particular words with etymological Cl further shows that the dialect atlases show relics of the passage of Cʎ to Cj and Cj to Cl which suggest a wider geographical distribution of each form. The analysis shows that in the context of convergent dialects, claiming a replacement of dialect features by standard language features is an oversimplification of the sound changes processes involved